Dear Healthcare, It's You

SUBSCRIBE NOW - Season 2 coming soon! In Episode 13, hosts Jo O’Hanlon and Dr. Elisha Yaghmai close out Season 1 of the podcast by talking through Elisha's insights on why American Healthcare is failing all of us, regardless of insurance coverage, location, or socio-economic standing.   His assessment is built from his personal experiences we've gone through this season: Medical school, his medical career in myriad care settings and locations, creating healthcare innovations as one of the first pioneers of telemedicine care models, and starting a telemed healthcare business that eventually also included a physical clinic. America's healthcare system is broken and failing all of those that it is supposed to serve: Whether you feel the pressure as it crumbles or not, it is affecting all of us in ways most of us don't even see.  We hope that by educating viewers/listeners on the cracks in our broken healthcare system, we can begin to peel back the layers and learn and understand what's not working, why it's not working, and how we got here. Together we can find a better way.  **** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Alexis Cruz - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production **** Dear Healthcare, It's You: A new podcast investigating the failing US healthcare system and what we can do to change it. UP NEXT: In Season 2 we're diving deeper into specific cracks in the system and bringing in more voices to give critical insights. If you have any specific healthcare topics you'd like us to cover, let us know on social media! **** Prefer to watch the podcast videos? Find us on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@dearhealthcareitsyou

In Episode 12 hosts Jo O’Hanlon and Dr. Elisha Yaghmai dive into the process of lobbying in the United States and how it plays a role in legislation changes that specifically can affect healthcare options in America. Hear about the final events that led to legislation being passed finally requiring health insurance providers to cover telemedicine services after Elisha and his team had been fighting for that for 5 years to no avail.  The state legislation they finally got passed in Kansas was the first of its kind in the US, requiring insurance companies to pay for virtual services, and requiring them to not block healthcare providers from becoming certified as a preferred provider on their payer panel just because they were doing telemedicine.  The law finally went into effect in Jan 2019, which helped pave the way for nationwide adoption of the same policies 15 months later as the Covid-19 Pandemic became widespread.  At the end of it all, the biggest lesson learned is that our bureaucratic systems and the parties with the most power in healthcare can and do stand in the way of innovation. Implementing improvements in our healthcare system (or any system) in America shouldn’t be this hard.  Hear all about it in this episode. Subscribe and get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes on in failing the American Healthcare System. **** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Ben Laffen - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production **** Dear Healthcare, It’s You — A new podcast investigating the broken U.S. Healthcare system. Why is it failing? How are you getting screwed over? Who is profiting? How can it change? **** Available on YouTube and major podcast platforms.

In Episode 11 hosts Jo O’Hanlon and Dr. Elisha Yaghmai take a step aside to talk about Elisha’s personal suffering during the early years of building a telehealth business (a new innovation for the US healthcare system at the time). Through several initial years of not getting paid for their telemedicine services, Elisha and his partners encountered one hurdle after another. Eventually, his partners pulled out of the venture, leaving Elisha at the helm alone to face extreme hardship on both professional and personal levels. But he saw that they had actually created something that solved a major gap in access to healthcare in America, he couldn’t let himself stop until he saw it become a reality. How does a change-maker, a leader in industry innovation feel when they’re hustling to make something happen for the world and they’re blocked at every turn? How do they feel when their partners leave and it’s just them alone left pushing for the acceptance of something revolutionary? How does it feel to pay such a high personal cost to make the world better? Hear about what drove Elisha to keep going even when the journey took such a great personal toll on him.  **** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Ben Laffen - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production **** Watch on YouTube or Listen on your favorite podcast app. Subscribe and get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes on in failing the American Healthcare System.

In Episode 10, Dr. Elisha Yaghmai continues telling the story of the history of Telemedicine in America and the role he played in it. In episode 9, Elisha shared how he came up with the idea of using untapped technology to solve access to healthcare in rural communities.  But health insurance blocked their progress, refusing to offer coverage (and thus payment) again, and again, and again.  After several years of battling, Elisha and his team finally were able to get new legislation passed that required Insurance companies to cover telemedicine and teleheath in the State of Kansas, and which would be a president for getting coverage nationwide the following year. Hear all about their battle and how they finally won in this episode. Subscribe and get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes on in failing the American Healthcare System. **** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Ben Laffen - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production **** Dear Healthcare, It’s You — A new podcast investigating the broken U.S. Healthcare system. Why is it failing? How are you getting screwed over? Who is profiting? How can it change? **** Available on YouTube and major podcast platforms.

In this episode, Dr. Elisha Yaghmai tells the story of how he came up with the idea for using telehealth to solve some of the systemic issues he’d encountered in rural communities in theory remedying healthcare disparities for those communities. In 2024 we’re all familiar with virtual doctor appointments and other online primary care services. Many of us have utilized these services and they’ve become standard since their widespread introduction in the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.  Several years before that, in 2014, Elisha was facing physician burnout. Burdened by administrative loopholes and pitfalls, systemic neglect, and unethical practices (like hospitals concealing death rates), Elisha was angry every day. Desperate for a change, he was seeking a new way to help in healthcare. He figured out a way for virtual medical care to work, got other doctors on board, figured out what technology would work together to do it at a very low price point, recruited rural hospitals that wanted to implement this new service, and began practicing AND IT WORKED.  They had effectively solved the access to healthcare, except for one thing — they couldn’t get paid. Insurance wouldn’t cover it. And thus ensued a years long battle with one of the largest, most problematic portions of our healthcare system: Health insurance. More on that next week… Watch or listen in to get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes on in failing the American Healthcare System. **** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Ben Laffen - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production **** Dear Healthcare, It’s You — A new podcast investigating the broken U.S. Healthcare system. Why is it failing? How are you getting screwed over? Who is profiting? How can it change? Season 1 follows internal medicine physician Dr. Elisha Yaghmai's story. As a medical student and beyond, Elisha begins to discover the systemic toxicity & failings of the US healthcare model and those discoveries have shaped his life's work and purpose: To find a better way. **** Available on YouTube and major podcast platforms. Subscribe to learn more!

In this episode, Elisha and Jo discuss the systemic issues in American Healthcare that brought Elisha to his first major experience of professional burnout. While still working in Seattle, Elisha started to experience more and more fatigue and psychological corrosion from working as a physician in a hospital setting. He doesn’t simply attribute his burnout to the seemingly unceasing work schedule he was under at the time, but rather that it was that paired with the mental taxation from the insurance hoops physicians were expected to jump through. Elisha explains how he was expected to code patients for billing in ways that ultimately can and do contribute to more systemic issues down the line — not just for patients, but for everyone (except possibly insurance companies)… Come back next week to hear what Elisha did next in the face of burnout which led him to a major shift in his professional trajectory. Watch or listen in to get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes into becoming a doctor in America and how that influences the healthcare the American public actually receives.  **** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Ben Laffen - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production **** Dear Healthcare, It’s You — A new podcast investigating the broken U.S. Healthcare system. Why is it failing? How are you getting screwed over? Who is profiting? How can it change? Season 1 follows internal medicine physician Dr. Elisha Yaghmai's story. As a medical student and beyond, Elisha begins to discover the systemic toxicity & failings of the US healthcare model and those discoveries have shaped his life's work and purpose: To find a better way. **** Available on YouTube and major podcast platforms.

In this episode, Elisha moves to Seattle to work as a hospitalist in a multi-hospital system — the complete opposite end of the spectrum of care from what he had just been experiencing as a hospitalist in a rural hospital in small-town Kansas.  In his role in Seattle, Elisha encounters two more major systemic flaws in the medical system: 1. Patients being subjected to continued treatment beyond what is kind or beneficial. Regularly, Elisha was faced with being one of many physicians on a patient’s case and being faced with a position where the patient’s quality of life was diminishing or just completely gone, but the families or decision makers who were looking for some sort of hope were continually sold on extended measures of care by other physicians in the system. This situation time and time again prolonged patients’ suffering, gave family members false hope, and wracked up more and more debt that would eventually fall to the family to pay once the patient had died.  2. Patients being irresponsibly and unnecessarily admitted to the hospital without any treatment or method of intervention even being attempted before admitting them. Elisha gives several examples of this, including those with incorrect information like the patient that was supposedly unresponsive, who Elisha found to be sitting up, conscious and coherent, having no idea why they’d admitted him, even though he resisted the admittance.  Through his time in Seattle, Elisha was exposed to incredibly diverse and difficult cases, which helped him learn an immense amount. However, he also got a look into the bowels of the profit-seeking nature of the larger healthcare beast in a way that would change his professional trajectory. More on that next week… Watch or listen in to get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes into becoming a doctor in America and how that influences the healthcare the American public actually receives.  **** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Ben Laffen - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production **** Dear Healthcare, It’s You — A new podcast investigating the broken U.S. Healthcare system. Why is it failing? How are you getting screwed over? Who is profiting? How can it change? Season 1 starts off with internal medicine physician Dr. Elisha Yaghmai's story. As a medical student and beyond, Elisha begins to discover the systemic toxicity & failings of the US healthcare model and those discoveries have shaped his life's work and purpose: To find a better way. **** Available on YouTube and major podcast platforms.

In this episode, we hear from Elisha about his move to a small rural community in Kansas to become the town’s hospitalist. While there, Elisha gets to exercise his medical skill autonomy — for better or worse — where there are few of the resources that larger city hospitals have.  Because the hospital in Parsons, Kan. has so few staff physicians and clinical resources, Elisha is forced to lean on a standard procedure in many rural hospitals: Bringing in relief doctors from elsewhere to cover the hospital any time a local hospitalist cannot work, such as on nights, or weekends. On his return to the hospital, Elisha finds a patient nearing death due to the gross negligence of the physician who had been covering the hospital and is faced with the reality that he cannot stop this physician from being brought on again and again at other hospitals across the nation. Elisha also encounters problems with the fractured healthcare system that can make it extremely difficult to transfer a patient in need to a more robust facility.  Constantly faced with situations where the facility and staff are not able to serve patients with the level of care they need, the time in Parsons wears on Elisha, and ultimately ends up being a short chapter in his early professional life before he moves to the opposite end of the spectrum of care in Seattle, Washington. More on that next week… Watch or listen in to get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes into becoming a doctor in America and how that influences the healthcare the American public actually receives.  **** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Ben Laffen - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production **** Dear Healthcare, It’s You — A new podcast investigating the broken U.S. Healthcare system. Why is it failing? How are you getting screwed over? Who is profiting? How can it change? Season 1 starts off with internal medicine physician Dr. Elisha Yaghmai's story. As a medical student and beyond, Elisha begins to discover the systemic toxicity & failings of the US healthcare model and those discoveries have shaped his life's work and purpose: To find a better way. **** Available on YouTube and major podcast platforms.

In this episode, we hear from Elisha about what drove him to switch residencies midway through his first residency.  Elisha had an eye-opening experience when a rotation of residents from another program visited and they had a clear understanding of a patient issue with additional knowledge that Elisha didn’t have at the time— even after giving his best efforts to self-direct and self-educate consistently for the past year of his program. What he realized was that as long as he was self-directing and self-educating, he would be at a disadvantage in terms of what he could learn still while in this phase of his education. Wanting to be the best doctor he could be, and offer a level of care that he felt good about, Elisha decided to seek out another resident program for the sake of learning more from other physicians who knew more.  However, there was a Catch 22: His first residency lacked professional oversight, knowledge/experience, and opportunity for Elisha to learn more, but had more of a collaborative, compassionate culture in general. His second residency had the higher-learning resources and opportunities Elisha was seeking, but it came with the cost of going back to a more aggressive, competitive, individualized approach to medicine and general culture within the medical staff that had left such a bad impression on Elisha in previous clinical settings.  This paradox, by this point in Elisha’s journey, was unsurprising but disappointing and ultimately led him to a new care setting as the next point in his medical journey: Rural Healthcare. More about that coming next week… **** Dear Healthcare, It’s You — A new podcast investigating the broken U.S. Healthcare system. Why is it failing? How are you getting screwed over? Who is profiting? How can it change? Subscribe now to get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes into becoming a doctor in America and how that influences the healthcare the American public actually receives. **** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Ben Laffen - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production **** Available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. New episodes weekly - Subscribe to stay up to date.

NEW EPISODES WEEKLY - SUBSCRIBE NOW Dear Healthcare, It's You: A new podcast about America’s broken healthcare system Episode 4: In this episode, co-hosts Jo O'Hanlon and internal medicine physician Dr. Elisha Yaghmai continue with Elisha’s story through his medical education. In his first year of his (first…) residency in Wichita, Kansas, Elisha encounters two opposing influences on his education: 1. A doctor who led teaching seminars for his resident cohort who truly seemed to care about the craft of practicing medicine well and helped re-invigorate Elisha’s curiosity and love of learning and investigating to help provide a thorough diagnosis.  And… 2. An abrupt entrance into practicing medicine with little to no oversight and his discovery that ‘efficiency’ in this setting didn’t mean doing a job well in a succinct matter, but but simply doing it as fast as possible.  Hear from Elisha as he shares about this juxtaposition of two competing influences, how he dealt with it, and what he came to understand through it all before transitioning to a different residency (which is a story for next week in episode 5). Join in to get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes into becoming a doctor in America and how that influences the healthcare the American public actually receives.  **** Dear Healthcare, It’s You — A new podcast investigating the broken U.S. Healthcare system. Why is it failing? How are you getting screwed over? Who is profiting? How can it change? Season 1 starts with Dr. Yaghmai's personal story of beginning to discover the systemic toxicity & failings of the US healthcare model as a medical student and how those discoveries have shaped his life's work and purpose: To find a better way.

NEW EPISODES WEEKLY - SUBSCRIBE NOW Dear Healthcare, It's You: A new podcast about U.S. Healthcare Episode 3: We continue to dive into the bowels of the American Healthcare system and its institutions.  In the third episode of the ‘Dear Healthcare, It’s You’ podcast, co-hosts Jo O'Hanlon and internal medicine physician Dr. Elisha Yaghmai continue with Elisha’s story through his medical education. Elisha's fourth year of medical school, while still illuminating in terms of the inherent flaws in our medical systems, finally offers a bit of reprieve from the previous rigorous abuse and obstructions to learning. As Elisha is able to delve into more hands-on and independent learning experiences through his fourth year of medical school, Elisha finds a renewed passion for what originally got him to pursue a career in medicine - the joy of helping others and being genuinely interested in how the human body works.  Being exposed to kinder working environments in the medical field, as well as getting the opportunity to learn independently ultimately helped Elisha greatly in his education experience, but the path was still riddled with clear glimpses of system pitfalls that could have resulted in much worse scenarios -- not just for him, but for his patients.  Join in to continue hearing the story, and getting a peak behind the curtain of what really goes into becoming a doctor in America. ***** Credits: Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer  Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer  Ben Laffen - Videographer  Austin Engler - Video Editor ***** Also Available on YouTube!

The healthcare system in America is broken in so many more ways than you know. In the second episode of the ‘Dear Healthcare, It’s You’ podcast, Cohosts Dr. Elisha Yaghmai and Jo O’Hanlon continue with Elisha’s story through his medical education. Elisha is finally able to transfer out of Tulane University after his medical school education was halted by Hurricane Katrina (and by backroom politics of the university stifling potential to keep learning elsewhere). But with a new school, he found himself in the of fire of an authority figure who used his position to abusive aims.  Jo and Elisha discuss how the environment of medical education in both medical schools he attended — including within the hospital and clinical settings — were hospital environments for abusive behavior to students. Ultimately, he argues, this type of abusive dynamic plays into the reason we have both bad doctors, and doctors who are jerks, to say it nicely. *** “The lesson you got was: Don’t say anything. You push back against these people, and they can ruin your career. You’re done, and no one will help you. They know what’s being done, they know why it’s being done, and no one is going to help you. So what do you learn from that? I'm either gonna stick my neck out there and potentially lose my head; or I'm just gonna shut up and keep trying to push, because someday I won't have to deal with this.” “What it produces in the most pernicious part of it, are people [whose] best skill is hiding their weaknesses.” *** New Episodes Weekly. Visit our website for more details: www.dearhealthcare.com

Dive into the crumbling American healthcare system and take a look under the (very dusty) rug of its infrastructure. What is happening in our healthcare system? Why is it failing? Who is profiting from it? What can we do to enact change to make it better? Join cohosts internal medicine physician, Doctor Elisha Yaghmai, M.D., & independent journalist, Jo O’Hanlon, as they search for answers. In this episode, they discuss the current state of the healthcare system in the United States (especially in-light of the Covid-19 pandemic) and the start of Elisha’s story of discovering the brokenness of the U.S. healthcare system.  The first time Elisha saw the cracks of the system was as a medical school student in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. His university was more concerned with tuition retention than helping stranded students resume their education and training, and backroom politics began to take a toll.

SEASON 1 starts January 30, 2024! America's Healthcare system is broken. We all know that much.  ‘Dear Healthcare, It’s You’ is a new podcast setting out to investigate the U.S. healthcare system and its medical institutions in order to take a closer look and help the American public take a deeper look into what really goes on in the world of healthcare.  The conversation in the U.S. is usually about who pays for healthcare, but we need to take the conversation further to really understand the situation if we hope for any real change.  We need to talk about the healthcare you’re actually receiving — regardless of who pays — and the many, many ways it should be better than it is. Season 1 starts off with host Dr. Elisha Yaghmai’s personal experience through medical school and beyond, and the ways he discovered corruption and ill-focused practices that have leached through the entire system.  In coming seasons of the podcast, we’ll be including the stories of others in the medical field as we dig into the cracks of the system and follow the threads that will help medical professionals and the general public both to better understand: What is happening in our healthcare system, why things are as they are, who is profiting from it, and what we can do to enact change to make it better.  We called this podcast ‘Dear Healthcare, It’s You’ because really, this is a dear John letter. Elisha and the majority of medical professionals are frustrated with a system that no longer serves the people it’s supposed to, but their frustration is born out of a place of genuine concern and care. We’re going to be airing out some systematic dirty laundry. It’s time to clean house and get a healthier system in place to serve the people again.